ipl-logo

Racism In 21st Century America

478 Words2 Pages

December the 6th, 1865 marks the end of slavery and white supremacy. A glance at the 21st century America manifests otherwise. Racism is an ongoing issue that contributes largely to class boundaries within significant aspects such as economy, education and society of the United States, making people of color inferior to white people. The key components that construct a country into greatness are economy, education and society. The inequality and injustice present in these interlinked components, bound by social class hierarchy, can lead to desisting the full potential to be a globally respectable nation.

Class is a social system of hierarchy based on economic wealth. Joseph O. Jewell, author of Race, Social Reform, and the Making of a Middle Class: The American Missionary Association and Black Atlanta, 1870-1900, explains class as to “exist in large part as cultures-shared set of rules, ideologies, or …show more content…

Whites lead the number of employments (with less than a high school diploma) at 7,879,000, while blacks (1,069,000), Asians (500,000) and Hispanic (5,472,000) fall behind. Unemployment rates in colored people (Black: 8.4%, Hispanic: 5.8%) are higher than that of white (4.3%) as they have been through history. The unemployment rates of those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher are more prominent in blacks (3.7%) than Asians (2.8%), Hispanic (3.1%) and whites (2.3%). These results conclude that racism creates employment discrimination in the US economy. The reasoning for this discrimination is formed by the need for white laborers to secure the “materials and the symbolic aspects of their social position.” (Jewell, 2007, P. 14). As the labor force is impacted by race, income is affected; as class is defined by wealth, colored races are segregated and ranked lower in the hierarchy of social

Show More
Related
1025 Words | 5 Pages

By ignoring racism, on a whole society will encourage lower wages and racism. Omi and Winant discuss in this chapter that their problem with the class-based paradigm is that it-ignored race. It puts all people on the same playing field, which we know isn’t true. Race does not follow class

Read More
780 Words | 4 Pages

In the article, The Resegregation of Jefferson County, a wide variety of different sociological aspects are portrayed under the fight to separate the school, Gardendale, from the rest of the Jefferson County school system. Multiple different inequalities are discussed in different forms throughout this article specifically including income, institutional racism, and neo-racism. All of these forms of social stratification are still alive today. Social stratification is described as “inequalities among individuals and groups within human societies. (Giddens, Duneier, Applebaum, Carr, p. 194)”

Read More
1482 Words | 6 Pages

Economic domination which started with the slave labor of people of color has continued to benefit Whites through job discrimination, job segregation and labor exploitation. A recent (2017) meta-analysis of field experiments over the course of 25 years analyzed callbacks for Black job applicants relative to white applicants. Researchers found that even when controlling for education, gender, occupation and study method, that hiring discrimination against Blacks has not declined since 1990 (Quillian et. al. 2017). The Economic Policy Institute found that while controlling for access to education, work experience, or location, Blacks make 27% less than Whites in 2015, a wage gap that has continuously grown in the past forty years (Wilson and Roger 2016).

Read More
461 Words | 2 Pages

Life has not been fair to the working class people of America, no matter what their color or ethnic background. Also it is working class families who feel the fluctuations in the economy most quickly and more keenly. Prejudice and discrimination and institutionalized racism have barred minorities from full participation in the society. Comments / Questions 1. Inequality exist in America even though people don’t really talk about, working class family always suffer in this kind of economy.

Read More
738 Words | 3 Pages

Even if you are one of the poorest people in the town, if you are white, then you are still more significant in the social classes than a black person. Today, people are going through the same racial discrimination that was happening so long ago and will happen till the day our world is nonexistent anymore. In our society, people are judged for many things they can’t change. In the article, “Inequality, Race, and Remedy,” there was a study done that sent out approximately 1,300 résumés to apply for the same job.

Read More
331 Words | 2 Pages

These were some of my favorite readings so far that we had been required to read through. They were very enlightening and provided many great perspectives and stories from white and minority people alike. The three readings I enjoyed the most are Defining Racism: “Can We Talk?” by Beverly Daniel Tatum, Color-Blind Racism by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, and Smells Like Racism by Rita Chaudhry Sethi. What I liked about Bonilla-Silva’s piece is the quotes taken from the white privilege.

Read More
651 Words | 3 Pages

Goldfield discusses different race theories and how “race consciousness and racism pervade every fiber of our social existence.” He also asserts that the belief that white people are superior to all other races, or white-supremacy, has played a major role in America’s economic system since the early days of American colony. This issue was elaborated more fully through Gary Becker, “[...] employer preferences for white rather than non-white employees are irrational in that they diminish the employer’s potential profits” (8). As a result, the working-class politics is extremely underdeveloped in the United States. Goldfield expressed that a coordinated effort and a sustained class-based labor movement by poor working class whites and non-whites would help eliminate the economic disparity in

Read More
1540 Words | 7 Pages

Martin’s. Mantsios talks about how class is not a word Americans would use to describe out society. It is not used in our everyday language nor is it acknowledged. Our society does not use terms like “working class”, “upper class”, or “ruling class”. Rather than the people in the lower or working class identifying with their correct class, they refer to their ethnicities or geographic location.

Read More
703 Words | 3 Pages

In the essay, “A Genealogy of Modern Racism”, the author Dr. Cornel West discusses racism in depth, while conveying why whites feel this sense of superiority. We learn through his discussion that whites have been forced to treat black harshly due to the knowledge that was given to them about the aesthetics of beauty and civility. This knowledge that was bestowed on the whites in the modern West, taught them that they were superior to all races tat did not emulate the norms of whites. According to Dr. West the very idea that blacks were even human beings is a concept that was a “relatively new discovery of the modern West”, and that equality of beauty, culture, and intellect in blacks remains problematic and controversial in intellectual circles

Read More
1780 Words | 8 Pages

Despite these differences, the authors identify their awakening to the reality a bout class and their place in the system. The authors trace their experiences in their respective social classes and their understanding of the implication of class. The organization of the book into five class categories facilitates the development of a

Read More
600 Words | 3 Pages

There is a profound gap of wealth between median black and white families, In Race, Wealth, and Intergenerational Poverty, Darrick Hamilton, Professor of Economics and Policy, and William Darity, Professor of Public Policy, discuss the causes of this gap, and measures that can be taken to resolve the disparity. Hamilton and Darity assert the claim that we live today in a post-racial America is false, largely due to the fact that the disproportionate wealth gap between median white and black families exists. They present statistics from a 2002 survey, demonstrating the gap of net worth between white and black families to support this. Hamilton and Darity, using this evidence, dismisses the assertation that race is no longer a determining factor in one’s life chances, which many claim is so gesturing to the election of President Barack Obama, but the evidence of the wealth gap supports the contrary. As to why this gap still exist, Hamilton and Darity dismiss the two most proposed reasons.

Read More
908 Words | 4 Pages

Only 75 percent of blacks have received post-high school education, compared to 85 percent of whites. Not surprisingly, blacks on average also make less money than whites” (Philip M. Deutsch). It’s unjust that people of color are treated as inferior to white people, and it is that kind of social issue that interferes with the liberties of all Americans of

Read More
628 Words | 3 Pages

These weighty statistics show that despite many efforts to reduce disparity among races and socio-statuses in the U.S., inequalities are actually increasing. When determining why simple incentives towards addressing these issues have become such a hard hurdle to jump over comes down to the fact that the Black community has a systemic depletion of resources. Because of our racist past, many of our people have been demographically and financially displaced so the process of affording medical care, simple daily things, insurance, culturally responsive mental health providers, and more has become such a hard thing to obtain while it seems so easy on the

Read More
461 Words | 2 Pages

Matthew A. Painter provides examples of the racial disadvantages when stating, “Among blacks, darker-skinned individuals experience lower educational attainment … hourly wages…occupational prestige (Gullickson 2005; Hill 2000; Hughes and Hertel 1990; Keith and Herring 1991), spousal education” (Painter para 9) Race is a big factor of wealth because skin color, typically, decides one’s level of wealth. In many reports and statistics, show that skin color and race does affect

Read More
579 Words | 3 Pages

For this assignment, I selected three articles; one each from Forbes and The Economist, and an article from the “Opposing Viewpoints in Context” section of Gale, written by Sisi Zhang. These pieces all speak to the same theme: racial wealth inequality is real and is exacerbated by poor education, increased incarceration, and public policy. Over the last thirty years, the wealth of the average white family has increased much more than that of the average black or Latino family. For example, between 1983 and 2010, the average wealth of white families rose from $184,000 to $1.1 million, whereas those numbers are much less impressive for blacks and Hispanics.

Read More

More about Racism In 21st Century America

Related Topics

Open Document